my distribution scheme for GPLed software

[Jerome Alet]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 02:17:41PM +0100, Paolo Gianrossi wrote:
> Alex Hudson writes:
>
>  > Surely the restriction on naming is a "violation"? Although an author
>  > cannot really violate the license on his own work :)
> 
> Well, i'm not a lawyer as well, but i think it's a meta-problem: you
> wouldn't violate YOUR software license, but you would violate the GPL
> itself: you want to use a "modified version" of the GPL, and this 
> modification is a violation.

I think Alex and You found a weak point with my current position.

So I wondered : what about the package tarball filename ?
Seems like a complete distribution name but at a different scale.

Is the package filename part of the "source" code or not, or in 
other terms is the filename under which the package is redistributed 
(tarball) covered by the GNU GPL ? 

Can I impose restrictions on the package file name, while still 
allowing to modify the version number (and the rest of the source) 
in any way the user see fit ? 

I think obtaining a trademark on the package name itself is probably 
the solution here (not that I'd like to do that, actually), like say I 
obtain a trademark on "PyKota-Official" and distribute official 
packages as PyKota-Official-x.xx.tar.gz. Then I allow people to use 
the trademark only for "unmodified" official packages, while still 
allowing them to do whatever they like with the source. 

Not sure if this makes sense at all, it seems to be what RH does,
and I'm really not fond of this.

I'd just want to find a "correct-both-ways" path to do things.

It's time for me to rethink about the problem, it seems...

Thanks to all.

bye,

Jerome Alet